Angels Go Naked

by Cornelia Nixon

In the gritty felt of the glove compartment, she found a paper clip and a plastic pen. When she glanced up, they were flying past the turnoff for the bridge.

  “Turn here!” she shrieked and grabbed the dash.

  Swerving across three lanes, they raced into the toll plaza. “Carpool Free,” said a sign on the far left. Webster aimed for it. “Carpool Is Three Persons,” it also said, but the gate was up. He did not slow down.

  “Webster! Stop!”

  The attendant put his head out, pulled it back in fast. Whoosh, they passed the booth. A dozen lanes merged down to five, drivers jockeying for spots. Webster claimed a lane and blazed right through.

  Her voice was high and thin. “Are you trying to get us arrested? Have you lost your mind?”

  His voice was calm. “Let’s not talk about losing one’s mind. Let’s not talk about throwing away eighty bucks on the street.”

  “Oh, it was not eighty.”

  “You don’t have a clue about money, do you? You don’t even know how much you gave away.”

  “Of course I do. It was . . . less than we spent on dinner. If you’re going to be stingy, why don’t we talk about that?”

  She glanced at the road. He was about to hit an enormous Cadillac, banked with lights.

  “Look out!” she screamed.

  Webster wove around it with a grace he’d never noticed at lower speeds. What a relief it was to be driving. How had she ever cowed him into riding on the passenger side?

  “You walk by homeless people every day,” he said. “And I’ve hardly ever seen you give a dime.”

  “That’s because you don’t pay much attention to what I do. I do it all the time, when I’ve got money with me. When I’m allowed to have money with me. You’re the one who walks right by them.”

  “So now you’re going to get self-righteous. Do you really think you wanted to help those people? Or was the point to make a scene in front of David and Isa? There I was, trying to convince them I wasn’t crazy for taking you back—”

  “Oh, I see. You had to convince them of that. Thanks for telling me.”

  His eyes were on the road, hands on the wheel. He wasn’t angry, only Margy was angry.

  “Look, I realize you were in some kind of state tonight, from talking to Isa. Some kind of breeding frenzy. But I don’t see why that had to make you—”

  Leaping out of her seatbelt, she faced his profile, familiar as the blade of an axe.

  “What an attractive phrase that is. Why don’t you give a course in elegant speech for the home? Call it ‘Thug Talk Made Easy.’”

  They roared through the tunnel and out onto the second bridge, the lights of the city suddenly fat and bright. Webster kept his foot on the floor.

  “Have you ever noticed how often you attack me, in how many different ways? I’m a thug, and childish, and stingy, and I’ve ruined your life. You seem to want to keep me feeling guilty, all the time.”

  “Oh, I do not. I never said—”

  “Why is that? Is it to distract me, so I won’t notice what you’re doing? So the next time you call me up and say that you’ve been—”

  “I do not!” She put her hands over her ears, knowing what was coming next. “I do not!”

  “Opening your legs for a stranger—”

  “You know it’s your own fault that happened! You know it’s your own fault I left!”

  “My fault?” he said in wonder. “My fault?”

  His brain felt suddenly clear and bright, starlike. He knew what she meant. “Webster doesn’t want to,” she could say any time she liked, and walk out with another man. Webster did not want to, and she did. That was her alibi. A thought shot through him in a blaze of light. Margy knew how to get what she wanted. Why hadn’t she made it happen, if she wanted it so much?

  He imagined a baby, a very small one, his. Of course he’d love the little salamander. He’d probably love it too much. He wouldn’t let it out of his sight. The first time he’d found a real one in the wild, a California slender, tiny and black, he’d picked it up, stunned by its thread-sized fingers, tiny legs. How could anything so vulnerable stay alive? Leaving his hand, it climbed his arm, parting the hairs, and when it came to the bend of his elbow, it lifted its small, curved face to gaze at him as if he were the face of God. How could he let it go, in a world full of shoes and rakes and tires?

  “The truth is, Margy, aren’t you the one who doesn’t really want kids? If you did, wouldn’t you have made it happen by this time?”

  She stared at him as if balanced on the head of a pin. Lifting her arm from the shoulder, she slapped his face, his shoulder, his arm, the side of his head. He caught one hand, but she hit him with the other. Striking his eye, she knocked out a contact lens.

  The road ahead was now bright fuzz, sliced by the speeding blackness of her arms. Closing the eye without the lens, he just made out the road ahead, flattened into bleeding planes of light and shade. Reaching an exit, he spiraled down to a wharf and stopped.

  She was no longer hitting him. Taking hold of her neck, he bent her back against the seat. Her face was a white blur, staring up an inch away. This was not real, it was a play, he could throw her out the window, drive the car into a post, put his fist through the windshield and grind glass into his wrists, but nothing in the real world would be changed. He jerked her throat to emphasize each word.

  “If you ever hit me again, I will kill you. I will kill you.”

  Lying on the front seat, he searched his face. Only the tips of his fingers tapped spider steps. He checked his eyebrows, hair, neck, clothes, the plush upholstery of the seat, the steering wheel, the sandy floor. He did not find the contact lens.

  One hand over the vacant eye, he faced the way she’d gone, toward the rear of the car. To get the depth, he opened both eyes. On his left a row of round-topped warehouses humped along, running together and re-forming like nightmare elephants. On his right an elevated freeway sliced out of the dark, a giant wing aimed for his head.

  “Margy?” She couldn’t have gone far at this time of night. She didn’t have a quarter to make a call. All she had was the Italian sweater on her back. “Margy?”

  He walked for several blocks, calling her name. The water was close by, exhaling tide rot and diesel oil. Rotating his face like radar, he kept the smell on his left.

  Suddenly he was in the dark, without a streetlight. He flipped around. The light had gotten behind him. She wouldn’t be out there in the dark. The street along the wharf was wide, and cannily he crossed it to check the other side.

  Ahead was an empty lot, a field with grass. Out in the middle, a figure crouched. He could see her hair, springing out around her head. He ran out into the field.

  “Sweetheart?” She wasn’t going to make him search till he got lost.

  At the last second, she turned into a black plastic sack, stuffed with rags. He touched it with his foot. How could he have thought that was his wife? He darted back across the field the way he’d come.

  He stopped. Brick buildings had sprung up around him. He turned in a circle, holding out his arms. Where was the wharf? What had happened to the water?

  The pier lay in a slot between warehouse walls, with a view straight up to the bridge. Out on the end, where breezes licked the frigid water, Margy crouched against a piling, knees to chest, sweater stretched down to her stockinged feet. As she was running out the pier, one heel had caught in a crack, and she had kicked off the other shoe. She couldn’t see them in the dark. She could see streaks of greasy swells, in flitting greenish light, cigarette butts awash. One Styrofoam cup rode up and down on its side.

  She pictured his face, yelling an inch away. Touching her throat, she tried to distinguish sore spots the size of fingertips. Once, making love on a summer night, he had left the prints of all four fingers and his thumb in blue bruises on her upper arm. She had to wear long sleeves for a week, and he kept taking off her blouse to see the marks. “Tiny, delicate creature,” he had murmured, kissing them.


  Distant sirens cried, broken by wind. The roar of traffic from the bridge began to subside. The dark was now as perfect as the bottom of a burrow, even the green light gone. With the piling at her back, the cocoon of sweater warmed. A wave of sleep passed over her.

  How did people learn to sleep in public places? Resting her forehead on her knees, she closed her eyes, but couldn’t sleep. Stretching out flat, she crossed her arms over her chest.

  Yards below, water rose and fell with rhythmic sighs. Her hands and feet began to swell, until they felt like claws on an industrial crane, and filled with pleasure. She wanted them to keep on growing. Her fingers bulged up big as Florida. Uncrossing her arms, she let her belly go. It sprang up, huge and round, grazed the bottom of the bridge, ballooned in space. She was not a tiny, delicate creature now. She was a house, a city, a planet, home to rivers and oceans, forests and mountains, a food-delivery system, a sewer, a bed, all that was needed for sustaining life. If she got up and walked, she could dent the ground.

  She imagined Webster where he must be now. In their hotel room, he’d wash his face, slide between clean sheets, stare at the dark. She’d open the door, trudge in, enormous belly first. Crossing to the bed, she’d shake the floor.

  “Here it is. How do you like it?”

  Webster’s eyes would open wide, his face become polite.

  “Don’t hit me,” he’d whisper.

  And she would say, “All right.”

  Out of the darkness thrummed a huge white boat and searched the blank face of the water with its lights. Stark glare deflated Margy, pinned her to the planks. The pier had corners, cleats, a coil of thigh-sized rope and heap of rusty rags, etched with shadows in the light. It wasn’t close, dark, safe, but airy space, part of the street.

  The dark was blinding when the boat had gone. Springing to her feet, she felt her way along the rail. One shoe stuck quivering by its heel, the other near it on its side. She ran to the lighted street before she shoved them on. It was hard to run in heels, but a woman alone on a wharf near dawn had better not walk.

  Ahead she could see an elevated freeway, then city streets. The wharf was empty now of cars, except one, a new American compact half in the street on the wrong side. Swerving wide, she ran beyond it before she realized she’d seen that car before.

  “Kill you,” he had said in it. “I will kill you.”

  She ran another block, cast back a glance. The car didn’t only look empty. It looked derelict, left to drift.

  Warily, she circled back. The doors were unlocked, and the keys dangled in their ignition slot, glinted in the faintly orange light. In the tray between the bucket seats lay the square gold key to their hotel, the only one they had. Turning away, she looked around. Where exactly had he gone?

  She was alone now, in a way she had not been before, when she could aim what she was doing in his direction. Street breath passed over her. Nothing moved, but everything looked like it might the second she turned her head. Leaping into the car, she locked the doors.

  She felt watched. Starting the car, she left the wharf like a hand off hot metal. Racing to the hotel, she did not stop for lights. Webster wasn’t in their room. He’d left no message.

  She called the police, and they asked questions.

  “Has your husband been feeling despondent?” the officer said, and told her to call back if he didn’t turn up in a few hours. She called David and Isa, woke them up. No, they had not heard from Webster, why should they? Was something wrong?

  “Yes, no, I’ll let you know. Sorry I woke you.”

  “Margy?” David said as she hung up.

  She changed into jeans and sneakers, got back into the car. The dark began to fray as gray light leached in. It gave the empty streets an illusion of safety, like a person sitting next to her, doing what she did. Doors locked, windows shut, she rolled along the wharf and nearby streets. He was not in the all-night restaurant on Market. He was not asleep on the sidewalk in a doorway.

  Passing the ferry building for the third time, she noticed a pedestrian tunnel to the landing. Through the tunnel, she could see a body lying on the ground. Parking the car, she checked the street and ran for it.

  The tunnel stank of wine and urine. On the other side, a plaza opened over the water, with huge cement planters circled by redwood benches. On the benches, under them, mashing down the tall blue lilies in the planters, people slept. The preferred position was on one side, knees drawn slightly up, arms crossed over the chest. Most were prepared for cold, with a jacket or a blanket, a hat or a scarf around the head. But one had only a linen jacket, a silk tie. Lying on his side, hands between his knees, he’d flipped the sage-green tie over the side of his head, like a dog with one ear inside out.

  She took a step closer. His lids snapped open. A spark lit his eyes and died as iron came down behind them. Neither of them moved.

  Finally Margy took a chance. She raised her eyebrows, faintly pulled up the corners of her mouth. Bravely she held onto it.

  He glanced away from her, closing one eye. She was mistaken if she thought they were all the way to smiling yet. It might be days or weeks before they got to that, if they ever did. But slowly, inch by inch, his frozen body started rising from the bench.

  Harbor

  Margy woke to the feel of Webster’s skin under her cheek. His big heart shuddered, and his sleeping breath rushed with a sigh, like waves. It was still a shock, the pleasure of touching any part of him, his back against hers as she slept, the pressure of his hip as they sat on a couch. It had been months since their almost-divorce, when they had called the lawyers, called it off. For a while they had gone on being furious, and shouted on the street in the middle of the night. They shouted in the kitchen and in bed, and then they went ahead and made furious, ecstatic love and shrieked like factory whistles as they came. Webster sometimes even shouted in his sleep.

  But one afternoon, they had stood naked on a bedroom hardwood floor, in thin winter sun, to put wedding rings back on each other’s hands. Soon after that, with no warning, the anger seemed to lift. It made them almost giddy. It made no sense, or maybe all the sense there was. Now as she woke, she asked herself: Was she angry? Not in the least. She was giddy with relief. Webster felt delicious next to her. When she was pressed to him, there seemed to be a fountain bubbling into her, elixir, manna, sustenance. Fitting herself around him close as she could get, she slept again.

  His kiss woke her, the clean smell of his shaving soap. Dressed in a pink shirt and faded jeans, new wire-rimmed spectacles, he looked cute as a toy. She chuckled, half asleep.

  “Laughing in your sleep?” he murmured in her ear. “You lunatic. I’m just off to lab. You sleep. I love you.”

  The happiness was still there when she woke two hours later and sat up on the hard futon. It was a beautiful fall morning, warm and clear. Sun glanced off yellow maple leaves outside their new windows. The room was almost bare, oak floor, old mantelpiece, grapes carved in the high moldings. After the near divorce, they’d realized they had to leave their Lincoln Park apartment, start again, in a new place. Besides, Webster in a rage had gotten rid of all their furniture and kitchenware and Margy’s clothes. So they were free, with hardly anything to move.

  They’d found an old rowhouse on the Southside of the city, in Hyde Park. The first time they saw it, the walls were purple, used syringes stashed under a loose floorboard, a century of paint obscuring woodwork and details. Broke as they were, they had been lucky to find anything they could afford, and had to do the work themselves. They sanded, painted, and refinished, made it theirs. They ate picnics on the porch, and made love on the floor in the upstairs hall, since it was the only space without a window and there were no curtains yet. In this house they used no birth control. Nature could take its course if it was going to.

  Stretching, she stood and walked through empty rooms, high-ceilinged, airy, filled with morning sun. Webster’s soft pj bottoms hung on the bathroom door, and she stopped to sniff
his warm and yeasty smell. The room beyond the bathroom opened on both ends, a wide place in the hall, and they had started painting it with pictures on the molding that a child might like. Jellyfish and frogs and plankton, violins and music notes.

  Going down the old back stairs into the empty kitchen, she made coffee. Webster had built a simple table, legs fitted into the top without a nail or screw. It leaned slightly, but pushed against a wall it could hold plates and mugs, and they had bought two lovely old hard chairs at a yard sale. Sun shone across the clean expanse of empty countertops.

  Far off, in the empty living room, the phone began to ring, but she did not move. It rang and rang, with no machine to pick it up. It would be a wrong number. They had a new phone number here, and when they called each other, they signaled by ringing once, hanging up. They had to hide out for a while, the two of them, get used to their new life.

  Washing her yard-sale mug, she set it upside down by Webster’s on the counter, more pleased than if it had been old Limoges. She went up the bare front staircase (handmade, with a subtle curve) to bathe in the clawfoot tub. The bathroom was the only room that seemed furnished, white towels and washcloths, cheap and new. Louvers on the bottom of the window let in clear blue sky above. Sun shone in the water, rippling and wavering across a wall beside the tub. Filling it deep, she floated, not thinking at all. With just her nose exposed, she sank as she exhaled, bobbed up as she breathed in.

  The phone rang again. No, it was a different sound, a loud preemptive zap, meant to penetrate the house. It must be the doorbell, which no one had rung before. Lifting her head, she listened, careful not to splash. Of course Webster had a key, and no one else mattered. Letting her head slide back into the water, she floated in the peace and beauty once again.

  But the violin was waiting, and she had to practice before rehearsal in the afternoon. They were doing Brahms, a slushy symphony she hated. But she’d have to try to sound convincing anyway.

  Letting the water out, she dried and dressed in shorts and one of Webster’s outgrown hockey tanks, shrunk now almost small enough to fit her, close enough to practice in. It was liberating, really, to have none of her old clothes or things. Everyone should blow up their encumbrances, their miserable marriages, and start again.